All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Random thoughts

Harry Leslie Smith: Three books

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Today’s post is a book review/giveaway!  Thanks to everybody who commented on my post yesterday—if you haven’t read it, I’d love it if you did.  One of the things I love most about my blog is that I’m not limited in my topics.  Tomorrow I’ll write about something completely different, so check back often!

Harry Leslie Smith wrote three books which are all part of his memoirs.  I was hooked on his story from the beginning, and I read one book after another, eager to learn more about his life.

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1923: A Memoir Lies and Testaments

Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip

The Empress of Australia: A Post-War Memoir

The books weave together Harry’s personal experience with history as we know it today.  He was born in 1923 in England and lived in complete poverty growing up.  His family situation was incredibly difficult his whole childhood. He joined the Royal Air Force during World War II and was stationed in Hamburg, Germany after the war.  It was fascinating to see how people lived in Germany after the war—this was something I had absolutely never thought of.  He also did a wonderful job of bringing the difficulties of the lower classes in England to light, and bringing us into the mindset of these people and to really understand their struggles and challenges.  He tells his story frankly and calmly yet with humor throughout.

Harry had so many hardships in his life, but managed to keep hopeful that life would get better.  Harry is just a likable guy.  I found myself rooting for him at every turn. He met and fell in love with a German woman in Hamburg and had many ups and downs in their relationship, from courtship, to marriage, to moving back to Halifax, England, and finally emigrating to Canada (that’s where the story ends…for now.  The author is working on the next volume!)

I couldn’t put my kindle down while I was reading these three memoirs.  It’s funny, because I’m a huge fan of Downton Abbey, and I kept thinking about the fact that Downton Abbey is set during the same time period that Harry was born and was growing up.  Now yes, I know Downton Abbey is fictional, but it is based on real people–Here some people are living in such incredible luxury, and others are barely surviving.  I guess the world today is much the same though.  It’s just amazing to think about sometimes.

I emailed with the author several times as well, and he was always cheerful, pleasant, and erudite.  It’s amazing to me to think of what he has lived through.

Here’s Harry Leslie Smith’s bio,and here’s a link to his blog:

Harry Leslie Smith: Harry was born in 1923, in Barnsley Yorkshire. He is a Second World War veteran who served with the RAF. Following the war, Smith remained in the Royal Air Force and was stationed in Hamburg Germany as part of the allied occupation force. During his military tour in Germany, Harry Leslie Smith developed a strong attachment to the German people and their culture. Following his service in Germany, Smith was demobbed and returned to Yorkshire. In the 1950′s Harry Leslie Smith became disillusioned with life in Britain and emigrated with his wife to Canada. Following a successful career in the Oriental carpet trade which lasted close to fifty years, Smith finally retired to follow his true calling: exploring the social history of his generation through memoirs, essays and public speaking events. Harry Leslie Smith’s essays have been featured in Canada’s National Newspaper The Globe and Mail Facts and Argument Section, numerous journals and through on line platforms. He is an accomplished speaker that has told the history of his life and his generation during the Great Depression and the Second World War to schools, colleges and professional associations. He is the author of 1923: A Memoir, Hamburg 1947, The Barley Hole Chronicles, 1953: The Empress of Australia. Currently, Harry Leslie Smith is working on a memoir of Toronto in the 1950′s as well as a book about Ex Pats in Portugal. Nearly 90, he still has miles to go before he sleeps.

I always feel like I could write a better or at least, longer, book review, but I hate to give too much away. I personally don’t like reading a review that tells everything about the book, so that’s why I’m trying to be fairly brief.

Giveaway time!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I’m testing out the rafflecopter widget here so bear with me if there are any problems.  One lucky reader will win all three books, ebooks only 🙂  I think you’ll enjoy them, and you’ll be glad you got to know Harry Leslie Smith.  If you don’t win, I highly recommend you read them anyway–the kindle editions are really affordable (you can get the set for under $4….I guess this is a pretty cheap giveaway too, ha!)  Those are affiliate links above so if you do buy something I get a tiny amount.

Practicing

Do I get an opinion too?

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I’ve been practicing more (violin) than usual lately.  I wasn’t going to tell you why, because it’s one of those things that most musicians don’t feel comfortable sharing publicly.  But who cares.  I’m taking the St Louis Symphony audition next month.  I’ve taken lots of orchestra auditions in my life, and this is another one.  It just happens to be down the street.  There you go.

The other day I was playing the opening of the Brahms Violin Concerto and it just felt better than it used to.  I felt STRONG and I felt as if I was playing exactly what I wanted to and was more engaged and focused than I remembered being in the past.  I thought, huh, maybe lifting weights has helped me get stronger, especially from my back and shoulders.  I feel like I’m playing really well, possibly better than ever.  And then I thought, I guess I’ll see if that’s true at the audition in February.

In other words: my thought was that the only opinion on my violin playing that mattered was the opinion of some committee for about five minutes on a random day (click here to read a previous blog post about “orchestra auditions“).  It hit me how awful that is.  I should be able to have a valid opinion of my own playing.  It shouldn’t be based on the last audition I lost or a negative comment I received.  It probably shouldn’t be based on a positive comment someone gave me either.  I mean, I’m 34 years old, I teach people to play the violin, I have very strong opinions on THEIR playing.  I should be able to have an opinion on my own.

It’s not that I never think, oh that sounded good.  But when I think that, I usually try to squash that feeling.  I don’t want to get a big head, or overconfident, or heaven forbid, feel good about my violin playing, right? 😉  That’s not what we were taught in conservatory!

Okay, so here’s where I honestly think I stand, right now.  I feel like I’m playing really well.  I feel strong, my shoulder feels good, my wrists feel good (those are injury prone areas for me) and I feel like I’m doing a great job making the violin do what I want (I have specific things but I’m not going to get TOO technical!).  So all that should count for something, right?  My opinion should matter. 

And I should be able to say, I’m taking the St Louis Symphony Audition in February, and I’ve been working on the list and will continue to do so for the next month.  So what if you know that?  You’re not going to stop reading my blog if I lose, are you?  I don’t think I have any friends who will stop being my friend if I lose, either, so who cares?

Yet I’m still really nervous about publishing this post.  I mean, I’ll care if I lose.  But that’s regardless of whether I blog about it, right?

Food, Random thoughts

Miscellaneous Mondays

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I’m starting a new thing (ha, we’ll see how long this lasts) where on Mondays I try to catch up on random stuff I want to tell you plus remind you of any awesome things that happened over the weekend, if you are just a weekday reader.  Today I am giving you some discounts (Simply Snackin’ and Pretty Muddy Race Series), giving you a short book review, and telling you about what I was up to.  You can always bookmark this post and come back later if you are too busy today to deal with all of this information.

1. Simply Snackin’

I was recently sent some chicken and beef meat snacks to try out and tell you guys about.

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Each serving is 60 calories and obviously very high in protein.  The company is family owned (if that appeals to you!), and honestly, these snacks are delicious.  I’ve tried a few of them and I really like them.  They aren’t too dry like some jerky is—they are juicy and tasty, and a nice afternoon snack.

Through January, you can go to simplysnackin.com and enter SSjan2013 for 10% off the purchase price.  Again, even though I was given this product for free, I would buy it again for 10% off because it is tasty and I love high protein, portable snacks.

2. Book Review:

Champagne: The Farewell by Janet Hubbard

The main character in Champagne is a female detective named Max.  Max is in France attending a friend’s wedding when her friend’s aunt is murdered.  Though the French police are on the case as well, Max feels compelled to help, even while being involved romantically with one of the French detectives.  She tries to use her position as a friend of the family to get the other family members to confide in her, while trying not to get too romantically involved with the detective, Oliver.

I loved the detail in Ms. Hubbard’s writing and I enjoyed being transported to the French countryside. Sometimes the book felt a bit tedious and the author really wanted to emphasize how French things were, but I generally enjoyed the read and felt that the mystery unraveled in a natural way, without any ridiculous plot twists.  The ending surprised me but it all made sense, so that was a plus in my book!

Anyway, go to that link above to check out the book (it’s an Amazon affiliate link, so if you buy it I get a tiny percentage of the sales and that can help support this blog and keep me taking cat pictures and pictures of myself.)

I was provided a review copy free of charge but my opinions are my own.

3. Pretty Muddy Discount code.

Are you familiar with the Pretty Muddy races?  I haven’t done a mud run before, but maybe I will someday.  This is a mud run that is all women.  My friend Rose has a great blog post with mud run tricks and tips, and my friend Adam (The Boring Runner) recently wrote a post querying whether “all women’s races” were fair.  Both are worth the read.

They are offering a ONE TIME $20 discount. The code is GIRLTIME.

This special expires at the end of January…after that the price will never be this low again—no groupon or living social deals like you might have seen in the past.  Supposedly there is going to be one in St Louis in September but it’s not on the website yet…

4.  My life

I took a bunch of food pictures today, so I thought I’d share with you what I ate today in case you were curious. (Humor me because I realized I photographed basically everything I ate today, so this is possible.  Why, I don’t know.  Maybe I was bored, or I was playing around online with my friend Sarah and we realized if you instagram something and tag it with #crossfit you automatically get a ton of likes, or I’m obsessed with photographing my food because I’m becoming a caricature of a real human, or I get amused taking food pictures ever since a friend made a joke about turning food into poo…not like that joke has only happened once as some days I feel like my life is one big poop joke…but I digress.)

Breakfast:  I started with this banana…

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I had a lot of trouble cutting it, but I managed.  (There is a banana slicer on amazon, please read the reviews if you haven’t.)

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Oatmeal with banana, protein powder, and a little peanut butter for flavor.

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Lunch was leftover Salmon Frazer from Friday night, with rice and beans and spinach on the side.  Yummy!

Oh, then we went to see the Hobbit in 3D with some friends and I had some popcorn.  I didn’t photograph that, but I ate several handfuls and it was tasty.  The Hobbit was AWESOME in 3D.  On the list of things I have said in the past that are incorrect:  “I don’t see why anybody needs a camera on their phone” and “I don’t see why movies need to be in 3D.”  I was wrong on both counts.

After the movie we decided to grab dinner nearby and went to Granite City Brewery.  None of us had been there before so we were eager to check it out.

Chris started with the beer sampler.  I actually just had one beer (the IPA) but the sampler was much more fun to photograph.

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He and I are both huge IPA fans, and he ordered the IPA after sampling a bunch.

I had the Korean Tacos for dinner.  They had pork and a “korean” sauce on them.  Very tasty.  Not pictured: side salad.

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I didn’t eat the cucumber salad because I don’t care for cucumbers.

Our friends had brought us a small “anniversary”gift and we had the bag on the table.  The waitress asked if I was my birthday, and I said no, but our anniversary was last week.  She got excited and we were like, oh no, no, that’s not why we are out.  But then I remembered Chris JUST had a birthday and I mentioned that (yes, I’m an excellent wife) so she offered us a free dessert.  My rule is: never turn down free dessert.

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It was a really big cookie that had just been baked.  It had chocolate chips, almonds, and heath bar bits in it.  The four of us managed to polish this off pretty quickly.

How was your weekend?  Share in the comments!

Random thoughts, Weather

Why it’s best not to gloat

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Yesterday morning my friend Sarah was complaining of being so “cold” in Phoenix.  I often give her a hard time about this, because “cold” to her is usually about 60 degrees and I find when I visit she is always wearing significantly more clothing than I am.

Then I went to check the weather.  When you go to Weather.com the most recent cities you have looked at show up at the top.  After seeing the results I made a little picture for her…and for the world…hahahahahaha

That’s right, I have mad “Paint” skills.

But then later I checked back and…

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Things got even worse from there but I had stuff to do so I couldn’t spend all my time making pictures on the computer! I had to take pictures of the cat!

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I could spend hours photographing this magnificent creature.  (I mean, I do.)

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If you look closely you can see my gross black toenail(s). (She resembles a potato here I think. Or is potatoe?)

And then I had to go to work later.  I saw this in one of the pieces we played.

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And I had to make my friend take pictures of my tiny diet coke!  (You know how I am about diet coke.)

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Today—better go get some stuff done before we “have” to see:

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How’s your weekend so far? How’s the weather?

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(current weather…)

Cat

Birthdays and Cats

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Yesterday was Chris’s birthday.  We went to the Schlafly Tap Room to meet up with some friends and have some beers. 

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I wanted to get a picture of Chris.

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Me, recreating his pose.  I think I succeeded and indeed, made it even creepier.  Anyway, it was a low key night and we enjoyed ourselves.

Before we left the house…

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This happened.

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The cat loves lying on her back and she looks completely ridiculous when she does so.

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This part of her personality hasn’t changed since she was a wee little kitty, though luckily my furniture has been slightly upgraded.

I was reading Runner’s World Magazine (I’m not sure why I am still a subscriber but it sometimes seems exceedingly difficult to stop getting magazines) and found this interesting tidbit:

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Mike (my trainer) and I often have discussions about my hearing.  He is a low-talker, we are often in a room with lots of ambient noise and I often have to ask him to repeat himself.  He claims none of his other clients have that problem.  I don’t know. 

Maybe I am a little hard of hearing, or maybe his other clients don’t want to make a big deal about the fact that he should talk louder.  When I showed him that, he thought it was one of the most ridiculous “facts” ever and asked where I get this stuff?  (Which implied that I am a constant fount of bad studies and incorrect information…?)

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to end a post.  I shouldn’t just end every post with a picture of my cat judging you or giving you a sad look, should I?  Did you know that “sad cat” is one of the number one searches for my blog?

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Travel

Traveling the world

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My parents have always emphasized the importance of getting out there and seeing the world.  I grew up in South Carolina, but my grandparents lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania and we were often driving up to visit.  Along the way we’d stop in Virginia or other places to visit other family members, or we’d go to Philadelphia or New York City with our family in Pennsylvania.

We also spent a lot of time exploring our home state of South Carolina.  We’d drive to the beach for a weekend, or to nearby historical or ecological places of interest like Chimney Rock, Cowpens, or the Riverbanks Zoo for a day trip or a weekend camping trip.  In the summer we’d take longer trips, to the Grand Canyon, or to California and Banff, or to the Great Lakes.  I learned that there was a whole world out there and it was important to explore it and learn as much as you could about it.

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As a family of five or six (the sixth came later), the best way to see the world was to drive there.  If we stayed overnight somewhere, we generally camped.  We’d load up the car with the tent, sleeping bags, suitcases, camp stove, bug spray, water bottles, and bags of books, and off we’d go.  My mother would encourage us to keep journals on the longer trips (some of which are still CLASSIC reading when we visit—I’d say my early journals were the precursors to this blog, in fact, I was perhaps the first Healthy Living Blogger as I’d generally document every meal!).

As I grew older I continued traveling though often the reasons were different.  I’d travel for music festivals, to Colorado, to Europe, to small towns in Ohio.  I’d travel to visit Chris in Miami, Cleveland, and San Diego.  I’d travel for auditions for orchestras—to Houston, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.

And sometimes I’d get to travel for fun.  One of my favorite relaxing vacations is going on cruises (like for our honeymoon, and the summer before that, and Chris recently suggested we might want a cruise this summer).  There’s just something about being somewhere warm, eating a ton and lying around drinking pina coladas to your heart’s content.  Though going to Paris was amazing as well—tons of sightseeing and walking around, yet still eating a ton and drinking wine to our heart’s content.  (You see a theme here, right?  This is why I’m fat…)

If you read my blog regularly you probably notice I do tend to get to travel a lot.  I’ve got another trip to Phoenix coming up soon, and we just got back from Chicago.  After that I actually don’t have anything planned until the summer though.  Summer plans so far definitely include a trip to Long Island for my sister-in-law’s wedding and possibly another wedding or two. 

We’ve also tossed out the possibility of a cruise (There’s a great guide in the New York Times about cruising)—I’d love to do an Alaskan cruise out of Seattle, because that would be all-new to us– or you could visit a “sleeper city” like St Louis for fairly cheap (I love that Phoenix is also on that list!)  If you are ready to book your vacation you can go here for airfare, hotels, and rental cars.  There are also more articles about various destinations.  I love reading about the travel possibilities and dreaming about my next trip…almost as much as I enjoy taking the trip!  (I also love writing about it later and reliving the experience while looking at my pictures.  To me this is all part of the travel experience.)

Where do you want to go?